Thousand Ways to Say 'I Love You'
by MissD.Willows
Summary: I never felt loved before. Desired, yes. But for my body, not my essence. To all the others, any woman would do. Alex, though, see something in me I don't fully comprehend.


**Hi! So this is an english version of a short story I posted earlier and also my first attempt to post something in another language that not my own. Hope I haven't made many mistakes :P**

 **Anyway, I was working in another story and this piece just wouldn't go away, so I wrote it down. It's not even a proper story, I guess, just my way of keeping Normero alive.**

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It's funny how we learn about people even when we don't plan or want to. In all the time I've known sheriff Alex Romero I've learned a thing or two about him. I know he's stoic and pride himself for keep things in order in town, even if not totally according to the laws. But White Pine Bay has it's own rules, and a murder here or there, or a weed Market based economy is completely acceptable. But living with him, it gave me a new sense of who he is inside. Things he like or dislike, the details in the routine in the mornings or at nights, just before we go to bed. _"We"_... It's still funny to think about Alex and me as a 'we', since barely a month ago we were still fighting and clawing at each other demanding things we needed but knew the other couldn't provide.

So much has changed since then...

I used to know he rarely smiles, is always so serious and sometimes it even makes him look a little somber. Now I know he smiles a lot but just for me, and he likes my bad jokes too. I also know he has trouble sleeping and not so rarely his dreams become nightmares, and I can always tell when it happens because of the way he holds me to him, how his arms cling to me like claws, as if he was trying to hold on to me so he wouldn't lose himself in what haunts him. What he dreams about he never tells me. "I can't quite remember", is what he says. And I know he's lying, and he knows I know it, but none of us push the subject very further. Maybe he dreams about his mother, with his own past; maybe it's about the countless atrocities he has faced in his duty; or maybe it's about me, about the foolish possibility of losing me in some distressing, painful way. If he ever wants to talk, when he wants, I'll be ready to listen.

I always knew he would answer my calls no matter what time it was. Now I know he's a light sleeper and a morning person. I have no problem waking early, being a mother of two I had to adjust my hours with the sun, but I usually need something around half an hour to be completely awake and joyful. Alex? He's ready and alert as soon as he opens his eyes. Must be all that training in the marines and the police. But I also know he likes to stay in bed a little more if I'm there with him, and that he enjoys morning sex and cuddling. He likes to hug me, and I like the feeling of his lips hovering in the back of my neck

He loves my pot roast with potatoes. Actually he loves potatoes no matter what I do with it. And he has an easy domesticity with him, like he was born to be married, to be the perfect husband in a dollhouse. The way we maneuver in the kitchen or in the bathroom, how he puts his hands on my waist giving it a little squeeze when he passes me, how he keeps his things in order but is incapable of putting the wet towel in it's place...

And he's always worried with me and my well being, always open to fulfil each one of my needs and desires.

All this things I've noticed and learned in the past days. But it took me almost a month to understand that a lot of the things he does for me so willingly, he does because it's his way to say "I Love You". He doesn't speak of sentiments and emotions often, and to be honest neither do I, though I was the one who said those three little infamous words first. But he always guarantees the tank of my car is full, and that everything is working properly. He says I love you by helping me with the dishes, preparing me a hot bubble bath after a especially rough day, by massaging my feet and whispering stories until I fall asleep. He says I love you by gently putting his hand at the small of my back when he puts himself between me and the street in his subtle manner to protect me from some furtive car, and when he waits till I've tried all the dresses I liked in the shop. He says I love you when he drives me home in my car because I'm tired, and when he brings home the dress I liked but didn't take the previous day because of my insistence that it was too expensive. He says it when he buy me a single flower every time I go have lunch with him in town. And when, last week, he proudly walked me down the corridor of tampons in the drugstore and waited half an hour so I could get everything I needed. And when, that night, he took me out for diner and bought me a box of fancy chocolates and held me crying for a good fifteen minutes once we got home.

He says I love you when he's cradled between my thighs, kissing my neck and whispering sweet nothings in my ear and touching my body with so much tenderness that makes me want to cry, and how he always put my needs and my pleasure above his. He says I love you with his body, his eyes, his hands and his gestures, and his kindness and his attention.

I never felt loved before. Desired, yes. But for my body, not my essence. To all the other, any woman would do. Alex, though, see something in me I don't fully comprehend. He pushes my buttons and teases me just so I can come with some sassy answer, and I know he loves it because, when he thinks I'm not paying attention, he grins at the situation. He doesn't want me just for what I can do to him, doesn't want me for a discretion or to be someone who would keep his house tidy for free. He wants me to be with him in every moment, to talk, and share things, to hugs and mid-day calls to say he misses me. And all of this still scares me because I'm afraid of what I'm becoming with him, letting all my defenses fall down and trusting him with my life, my future and my heart. But when he smiles at me in the mornings, still sleepy, and says he loves the way my eyes shine at that time, it all vanishes from my mind. Because I know he is sincere. Because, in those moments, I realize that the whole time, all we've lived, has brought us here. We're damaged souls, tired, bitter, that have found solace in one another. We're like grenades that exploded in a collision. But, by doing so, we broke the walls we'd so strongly built around our hearts and then, piece by piece, we invaded each other. There's no turning back now. Because I know that something in all this messed up chaos that surround us has changed us forever. Cause he is for me what no other man ever was, and I am for him the only one he ever conceded a glimpse in all the sorrow and pain in his past Because, in the end, we're the same. Even when we show love without saying it, in every caring, worrying gesture.

He loves me, and even if he doesn't say it with words, I know it. I feel it. And I love him back.


End file.
